Significant changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure take effect to civil cases filed on or after Dec. 1, or to cases
already pending to the extent just and practicable. The Supreme Court of the United States approved these changes in April,
and Congress has taken no action to stop them becoming effective.

Removal of state-court actions to federal court has provided a seemingly never-ending source of procedural disputes. Fortunately
many of those mind-numbing issues have been resolved in the last several years by Congress and the courts, with the Supreme
Court of the United States addressing one key issue recently.

Throughout 2014, a subcommittee of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana’s Local Rules Committee,
including Magistrate Judges Denise LaRue and Debra McVicker Lynch, was hard at work on a proposed uniform protective order.

Any amendments to various federal rules always take effect Dec. 1. Some years there are significant changes, other years few
or no amendments are in play. This December is very modest in terms of federal rule amendments.

The Southern District’s website is revamped, with a new and improved look and feel. The case opinion search feature
remains and allows searching by judge and/or date. It can be a useful tool to get recent standards, for instance, on common
issues.

Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals presented his final State of the Circuit address during
the Circuit conference this month in Indianapolis, describing the federal appellate court for Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin
as perhaps the nation’s most industrious.

As most litigators know, in Asahi Metal v. Superior Court of Cal., 480 U.S. 102 (1987), a plurality of the Supreme
Court embraced the stream-of-commerce theory of personal jurisdiction, which generally holds that if a manufacturer or distributor
has sufficient knowledge and control of its distribution system, it can be sued in a state in which its products cause injury.
Since Asahi Metal, the theory has evolved somewhat in federal and state appellate courts but had not been revisited
by the Supreme Court.